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Some believe that memory has photographic qualities, “when you see something, your mind takes a picture and stores that image in memory to be retrieved in exactly the same form it was perceived in first instance”. Much research has shown that memory is more of a reconstructive nature. When someone asks you to describe a day of your holiday in France last summer, you do not have an image of that day stored in memory, but you use scattered images, feelings, smells and tastes when you describe how you, for example, barbecued by the creek. The chance is large that you remember sausages on the grill, because that is what you usually have, when in fact you did not have sausages on that particular barbecue dinner. This is a mistake of memory that is not very disastrous for your story, or for the people listening to it.

However, it could be disastrous when you remember that your father abused you as a child when in fact he didn’t. Or when you say the suspect that you saw near the scene of the crime was wearing a hat when in fact he wasn’t. These kinds of memory distortions are important for psychology and law. When you think it is impossible for people to remember things that never happened, or forget things that you believe are unforgettable than go to research areas to read more. There you can read more about my experiments, which focus on amnesia, malingering, forgetting, alcohol blackouts and more.

My colleagues and I investigate issues like memory distortions, meta-memory beliefs, false memories, malingering, feigning amnesia, traumatic memory, lie detection and more. If you want to know more about these topics, visit their homepages (colleagues).

Thank you for visiting.